What you find when you clean up

Yes, yes, it’s a procrastination too, but I did need to clean up my office over the holiday break. Going through all the papers I’ve printed off, deciding what is still relevant, what I need to read, what I can discard. Found a whole sheaf of papers I wrote while […]

The boundary gap: some thoughts

Engagement, and the role of ‘boundary spanners’*, exists on some levels to close the gap between academia and community, and here I use community in its widest sense, any person or organisation working or involved with the university. That gap, I believe, is a gap of knowledge and trust, caused […]

The result of speaking up

In my previous post I shared that I was giving my first public presentation about my PhD research, it was to a group (small group) of colleagues from across campus. Most of whom I didn’t know. Reader, I was nervous. To mitigate my anxiety, and menopause memory challenges I decided […]

Fuelled by Coffee

A little explanation … When I was dreaming up a name for this blog I decided on ‘fuelled by coffee’ as basically that is what keeps me going sometimes. I never drank coffee until I was pregnant with my first new life form, and then, for some reason, as my […]

Organising my workflow

One of my many challenges has been how to keep track of everything, my thoughts, my readings, my to-do list … if it’s not written down or noted in some form then I forget (yay for menopause brain). I have toyed with soooo many different apps and analogue methods but […]

Coping with Fears and Uncertainty

I had a supervision meeting last week, the topics of appraisals, conferences, and vivas came up … and my squirrel brain went into immediate chase-the-tail mode. Breathe. I am so lucky to have supervisors I can share my fears with, although I could feel the tears prickling the far recesses […]

Moved by Design

Transferring from Sociology to Design Research is akin to the change of wading through a claggy marsh and suddenly finding yourself paddling in a swirling river. Yes, it’s still a challenge, but at least progress is easier and quicker. I originally began in sociology as it seemed the better fit, […]

So far, so good (ish)

The journey is on an upward trend but has been, shall we say, challenging so far. To be honest, I struggled a lot. By the end of last year I was questioning whether I had made the right choice to undertake a PhD, questioning whether I was intelligent enough to […]